Bandwidth

In computer networking, bandwidth in bit/s may also refer to consumed bandwidth, corresponding to achieved throughput or goodput, i.e., the average rate of successful data transfer through a communication path. This sense applies to expressions such as bandwidth shaping, bandwidth management, bandwidth throttling, bandwidth cap, bandwidth allocation (for example bandwidth allocation protocol and dynamic bandwidth allocation), etc. A bit stream's bandwidth is proportional to the average consumed signal bandwidth in Hertz (the average spectral bandwidth of the analog signal representing the bit stream) during a studied time interval.

1 Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing) on Jan. 11, 2011. Partially adapted. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.